Svenonius, Ola

Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Political science. Södertörn University, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Baltic & East European Graduate School (BEEGS).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3562-7722

2011 (English)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)

Abstract [en]

The city as a focal point of both domestic and international security policy is characteristic of the 21st century security landscape in Europe. Amidst the 'War on Terror' and the pan-European battle against organised crime, the city is the location where global processes are actually taking place. Urban security is the local policy response both to such global threats as terrorism and local ones, such as violent crime. Public transport systems in particular came under threat after the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, Madrid in 2004, and London in 2005. This doctoral thesis studies security policy in three public transport systems – Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw – from a comparative perspective focusing on the conditions that made new and very specific understandings of security possible.

The study argues that urban transport security has undergone radical changes during the last ten years. While transport authorities and the police used to conceive security as related solely to crime rates, today the focus of security practices consists of passengers' perceptions. The study shows how this shift is paralleled by a new discourse of 'security as emotion', and how it came into being. It concentrates specifically on the central role that surveillance and private policing assumes as the security policy shifts objectives to the inner life of the passengers. Today, complex governance networks of both public and private actors manage security in the three cities. The analysis shows how passengers are constructed in the urban security policy as children, consumers, and citizens. These different 'roles' constitute the passenger in the eye of urban security governance characterised by technocracy, 'friendly security', and individual responsibility. The introduction of new governance models for public administration, the legacy of European communist regimes, and rising fear of crime are central conditions for this new, sensitised urban transport security.